School was canceled last Monday on account of typhoon. It turned out to be a generally nice day, fairly sunny and no hazardous weather. Nice forecasting.
My classroom was really dirty and still had junk in it left over from last year's teacher. Patty tried to get the administration to send someone to clean it, but to no avail. Solution: I came in on Friday afternoon (usually I'm off) in my very best cleaning clothes, and put in a little elbow grease. Spent an amazing amount of time just cleaning the door, which was practically painted with dirty old tape residue. Took a scrub brush to the wall, which was covered with footprints. Apparently people walk on it? During the break between classes, students saw me scrubbing the wall, and one little girl came up and asked "can I help you?" Sure thing, honey, I said. Some of the other girls asked the first girl if she thought they could help too, and she said they had to ask my for my permission first. (It's exchanges like this where secretly knowing Chinese is kind of delightful.) One by one, they politely asked in English if they could help me. Soon I had a whole brigade of 11-year-old girls with scrub brushes helping me clean. Patty got in on the action too, and got another student to take pictures of the two teachers on their knees scrubbing. I believe this was for the purpose of shaming the administration later.
I stuck around in the afternoon, making posters to decorate the classroom. It was a productive time for me, although it turned out later that the class was far less productive than usual. These particular students never have class with me, so Patty surmised that my presence was sufficiently distracting to keep them from getting their work done. Whoops.
Guo Laoshi (Patty) and Teacher Rebekah cleaning our dirty wall:
Teacher Rebekah hard at work making beautiful posters, a.k.a. distracting the students:
This past Sunday, I went with Patty, my host sister Grace, Steven (an English teacher at our school), and 4 other ETAs to Meinong, a Hakka village north of the city. I was told by several people that the Hakka people are famous for their paper umbrellas, and I should get one. I kind of expected to see a lot of handicrafts, and there were a number of handmade things in the little shops around the "village" (it wasn't really a village, it was just shops for tourists, I'm pretty sure). However, some of the shops had a lot of stuff that, face it, looked like it was straight out of Oriental Trading. Much of it didn't seem to even be related to local culture at all, like the ceramic statues of black jazz musicians. This same shop also featured a classy wooden statue of mating pigs. Taking photos was forbidden.
One shop in the village sold ceramic tea sets, but you could also throw your own pot there, so naturally we did. It's been forever since I attempted pottery, and I am woefully out of practice, but it was fun anyway. At the end you pick a glaze and give them a few characters to write on your pot, and they will fire it and glaze it and then mail it to you when it's done! I made a vase-like thing that I intend to be a chopstick holder for my classroom. I made a bunch of chopsticks with numbers on them (each student in the class has a number), so when I want to call on someone in class, I pick a chopstick and that student has to answer the question. It keeps things fair, and keeps everybody a little bit scared, so it's good.
After throwing pots, we had a lunch of traditional Hakka noodles. I have had a lot of special local noodles in different places in China and Taiwan, and I have to say that I don't really differentiate that much. They are all noodley. However, my Taiwanese friends made a big deal about the specialness of the Hakka noodles. I'm not sure why they are special, but they were pretty good. Anyway, after lunch we went and picked lemons from Patty's farm. Patty recently bought a little piece of property out in the countryside that has lemon trees growing on it, and she kind of wants to retire there and have a nice little lemon farm. The farm was looking a little rough on Sunday - there isn't anybody actively maintaining it - but we had a fun time picking lemons anyhow. At school on Tuesday I had an interesting discussion with Steven about lemons. I told him that our lemons weren't ripe because they were still green, and he said no, lemons are always green. Umm no, lemons are traditionally yellow, I said. No, he said, limes are yellow. Lemons are green. I disagreed. In America, I said, lemons are definitely yellow and limes are definitely green, but he was adamant that it was the other way around. Lemons are green! Limes are yellow! Up is down and down is up! This is a crazy country, I said.
School is pretty normal...some of my classes are amazing, some are awful. Twice yesterday I had to make a student sit at the *special desk,* a.k.a. the desk that's all by itself in the very front of the classroom by the blackboard. I am still trying to work out exactly what I should be doing with my handful of completely uncooperative students. I have one kid who never opens his book or tries to follow along with the lesson, even when prompted repeatedly. He does, however, get out of his chair and wander around, sometimes leaving the classroom. The other students told me that he has some kind of problem, and Patty says that she thinks he has ADHD and his medication is not working. I'm really not sure how to get through to a student like that, especially since nothing I say or do to him seems to register.
I have a few bad classes, where a number of students have behavioral problems, and the class performance seems to suffer, but some of my classes are just fabulous. Tuesday morning I had a few classes in a row that were just torture, but then in the afternoon the kids were so sweet and so attentive that it changed my mood completely. In one class, we played a game that I made up on the spot: I wrote pairs of words on the board that differed only by one vowel (bad and bed, for example). Then I covered my eyes, and Patty would point to a word. The students would all say the word that she was pointing to, and I had to guess which word it was. This was surprisingly tricky, and there was a huge reaction every time I guessed wrong. A number of times I guessed "cap" when they were trying to say "cape" (pronouncing long A correctly is a perennial difficulty), and by the second or third time this happened the kids were like "NO, TEACHER! C-A-P-EEEEEEEE! Augghhhhh" It was hilarious, and an interesting illustration for the kids of how their speech comes across to a foreigner.
We played another good game in my band class (a.k.a. the smart class) last Thursday...they finished all their work early, so I had them play the snowball fight game. I discovered this game because it was mentioned in a newspaper article about our superb kindergarten teacher back home. The band class only has 30 kids, and the 7 top students were missing class to go to some invitational lecture or something for top students, so the class was nice and small, plus all of my spotlight-hogging star students were gone. It seemed like a great opportunity to let the other students do something a little crazy and have a chance to talk some more. Each pair of students brainstormed the most interesting word they could think of, and wrote it on two pieces of paper, once in English and once in Chinese. Then they balled up the papers and for 5 minutes we had a boys vs. girls "snowball fight" with them, after which everybody had to pick up a paper and find the person with the matching definition. Afterwards, each pair had to introduce their word to the class. Then we played another game where one student throws a ball to another and asks, "What does ___ mean?" and the student has to answer or else they are out. We used the words from the snowball fight, which was hilarious because they were so random. Some examples: organization, scorpionfish, Ancient Egypt, and, of course (we are in 5th grade here), "underwear." Underwear was definitely the hit vocab word of the day.
Today we had to do a special English Village event where the principals from all the Kaohsiung City schools came to see our English Village. We were supposed to perform the English Village dialogues with them, but this turned out to be kind of a lie, because of course it would be a terrible loss of face if one's spoken English is not very good, which is true of many school administrators. Whatever. On the bright side, they fed us twice! And called us aliens. Well, specifically, one of the principals was talking about us to everybody else, and she said that we were all E.T., which ostensibly stands for English Teacher, but everybody knows E.T., even in Taiwan. My feeling is: foreigner, alien, close enough. In Chinese they are very similar words; foreigner is waiguoren (outside-country-person) and alien is waixingren (outside-planet-person). I might as well be an extraterrestrial for the way people here react to me sometimes.
Ooh, so I've started swimming at my school on Tuesdays after class, because Gered's host sister Isabella takes swimming lessons at my school then. I get to swim with her and the swim team, and it's fabulous. The swim coach is an awesome lady. Also, one of the teachers in my teacher class (also the mother of one of my band kids) invited me to come with her to a bellydancing class that the teachers have after school on Mondays. I had never bellydanced before, but it was pretty fun. The other teachers were very encouraging, and seemed highly impressed by my proficiency at the booty-shaking move. I suppose this is where my comparatively large American rear is an asset. (zing!)
On Monday I also went shopping after bellydancing...we've been invited to a party in Taipei hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to celebrate 10/10, Taiwanese Independence Day. The invitation said cocktail dress for ladies, so I had to go on a quest to find one. First I tried a dress-rental place, thinking it might be cheaper to rent than buy. Wrong! The only dress that I like much at the rental place was over US$200 to rent, which seemed not worth it for a single-night event. Instead I wandered home, stopping in any store that looked promising. I was feeling discouraged, since it seems like Taiwanese dresses come in my size, but not my shape. Finally I found a dress at a little boutique with an adorably effusive little saleslady. When I came out of the dressing room in the dress, she practically squealed, hao ke'ai! (how cute!) Then I discovered that it was 75% off, since the fall merchandise was coming in so all summer clothing was crazily on sale. Total damage: US$40. Much better. Still need shoes and a bag that's not my giant everyday one...that will have to wait until tomorrow.
Last time in English Angels we tried to learn "I Just Can't Wait to be King," and it was wayyyyy too fast for them and the words were too hard, so I promised I would find a replacement that is easier to sing. I'm thinking of "My Girl." Our best song by far is "Y.M.C.A.," though. Now my kids are all prepared to attend American weddings.
Ahhhhh must sleep! Look at the sacrifices that I make for you.
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